


In the Cold Light of Day

by Jurice



Category: Hyakujitsu no Bara | Maiden Rose
Genre: Acceptance, M/M, changing times, metaphors and introspection, reconciliation of desire with circumstances, subdued hope with a pessimistic flavor to it, the nature of strength and beauty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 06:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3371060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jurice/pseuds/Jurice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More often than not, Taki is beyond Klaus’s reach, and unfortunately, love is most inspirational when it is an affliction and just out of one’s grasp; it is much like how the poets of the olden days admired their muses from afar or the tales of knights and princesses falling in love, all nurturing a forbidden fruit never meant to be picked. </p><p>But whether or not Klaus decides to pick that fruit — and whether or not he is able to — will not prevent its decay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Cold Light of Day

**Author's Note:**

> I recently came across a poem I had been assigned to memorize years ago and immediately thought about how it describes Taki incredibly well. Flower metaphors in the poem aside, I really admire how it characterizes the nature of beauty, which I'm sure Klaus has considered more than once.

  
__

__

_Nature's first green is gold_  
_Her hardest hue to hold._  
_Her early leaf's a flower;_  
_But only so an hour._  
_Then leaf subsides to leaf._  
_So Eden sank to grief,_  
_So dawn goes down to day._  
_Nothing gold can stay._

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”  
by Robert Frost

__  


He's close — very close. Close enough for his shadow to fall across Klaus as his figure becomes silhouetted against the setting sun, in this famed Land of the Rising Sun that was once so formidable. But it is not for this tragic irony that Klaus inwardly weeps.  


He knows Taki’s land has fallen and bowed down to its neighboring states, accepting its inferior position. It takes very little for wise men to acknowledge that even the most glorious of empires one day fade away into history, reduced to several sentences of flattering text in dusty books and kept in the unused libraries of rich men. However, it is much harder for wise men to accept that with falling empires fades the beauty of an era, and good men as well as good minds are always sacrificed for the cause of change.  


Klaus knows full well, more so than anyone, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and these days natural beauty such as Taki’s is shunned in favor of industrialization and imperialism, results of humanity's greatest vices and much too artificial for Klaus’s liking. Perhaps it is because, with the evolution of mankind into an era of war, in which those who are physically strongest survive, society no longer values the unique beauty of quiet strength and grace.  


Klaus has had the privilege — or burden — of living during the turn of a new era, and he himself has been one to initiate the step across the borderline; he has lived to witness the widespread shift of values and perspectives in not only his former country of allegiance but also in the many places he has been. However, unlike the masses, who blindly welcome their new fate of desolation and destruction with an optimism characteristic of the naïve and poorly informed, who are unaware of the true meaning of progress, Klaus has not changed much over the years. Others are not quite as nostalgic as him; many more simply do not remember the past and thus have nothing to be sentimental over.  


So tradition fades. Tradition fades, as does beauty, as do traditional values of beauty.  


Even so, Klaus will never give up his views of Taki, never will stop seeing Taki in an unique light, for he is, in simple terms, the most _exotic ___of any living creature Klaus has ever met. He is brilliant, blinding, exquisite, capable of great strength and great weakness, the very epitome of human nature and yet having the appearance of apathy. He is a creature of ironies, a creature of extremes and contradiction, subordinate yet insubordinate, conservative yet open-minded, fine lines and ambiguity, full of effortless candor and yet inevitably a hypocrite. He is equivocation and prevarication incarnate. He is incredibly self-aware, always in control — and the few times he relinquishes it, it is so he can control his freedom and experience a sense of self. He will not take the word of a scholar, but he will take that of a slave’s. And Klaus cannot describe exactly what it is he sees in Taki, but he is aware of its presence drawing him closer, hungering for more.  


And it is for him and against him that Klaus makes war.  


At times, Klaus questions the validity of his own judgment and decisions just as he questions that of others’. But his meandering thoughts and silent deliberation often bring him nothing but pain, present in the form of a sharp ache that constantly plagues his heart. He bottles up his thoughts, suppressing any unnecessary show of emotion — it is a skill so valued by Taki’s people as well as a cultural norm here in Taki’s land. Klaus had had trouble understanding it at first, coming to terms with so different a culture, what with his separate upbringing. So he met it on his own terms, facing it headfirst. He has somewhat adapted himself, even if he has not done so entirely; he refuses to associate passion with weakness, and many times he actually chooses not to conform, for that is what makes him different. It is what drew Taki to him, what made Taki choose him and come to him.  


Still, Klaus has become tamed, rendered less bold and more hesitant. Like this, he can forever keep his feelings hidden, and his failings ever more so. Before, he had always been one to act, not merely ponder over his desire to take action and the possible consequences, as Taki is now doing. For as much as Taki appears to be assertive, he is not always the _savage flower ___others describe him as. There exist cruel methods of dowsing the determination in his eyes. Klaus imagines they blaze as brightly as the mythical Greek fire, but even such an intimidating weapon can be snuffed out, if not by water then by the earth and dirt and dust that rise behind the extending tracks of advancing tanks.  


It is because Taki is well aware of this — that a man’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful — that he is extremely cautious. He has been trained to do just this from the very beginning, using his head and not his heart, trusting his reason and never his emotion. He does what he thinks is best instead of what he believes is right, and he is faithful to a doctrine he does not believe in, causing him to be unfaithful to himself. He reigns in his impulsive and emotional nature all too well.  


Regrettably, it is common knowledge that pent-up energy like his does not simply disappear. It only waits quietly in the shadows, biding its time and readying itself for the colossal force of explosive dynamite. It eats away at the artificially formed glass barricades of the heart, delicate and fragile, its fragments still pieced together until the final crack shatters it into a million pieces, showering the pitiful martyr with all the light of extinguishing stars.  


Taki is such a conundrum, a puzzle consisting of these delicate glass pieces as his once-steel resolve takes blow upon blow. But he is pieced so without plan from constant wounding and constant mending that Klaus does not know how to take him apart wrong.  


Taki is incredibly strong. Perhaps it is also for this reason, and not just the evanescent nature of beauty, that his fall is inevitable.  
In this world, survival of the fittest is, at times, an inaccurate notion. In a garden of roses, the most beautiful flower is always the first to be plucked. The beautiful, the passionate, the good-hearted, and the pure — they are always the first to go.  


More often than not, Taki is beyond Klaus’s reach, and unfortunately, love is most inspirational when it is an affliction and just out of one’s grasp; it is much like how the poets of the olden days admired their muses from afar or the tales of knights and princesses falling in love, all nurturing a forbidden fruit never meant to be picked.  


But whether or not Klaus decides to pick that fruit — and whether or not he is able to — will not prevent its decay.  


It is this that Klaus laments, and more: human follies, the remnants of marvels and men, all reduced to the filth beneath the next soldier’s boot as the cycle remains, never-ending. So if love consumes you, then what is there to do but to simply let it?  


If Taki is like white parchment, as pure as white rose petals fresh in bloom and washed by the early morning dew, then Klaus must be the black ink that can sully him, dripping over his conscience in ink-spots that dry like the splattered blood they are both so familiar with. But he is also what makes Taki beautiful — what can make Taki ever more beautiful — for writing can only occur when pen meets paper, and words flow freely as speech cannot. After all, written word is what remains in those dusty books in the unused libraries of rich men. At least they have the privilege of remaining, beautiful enough to be treasured and preserved just for the sake of preservation and not for the sake of revisiting. Perhaps that is, again, because the new always succeeds the old. People tend to value living in the present over reminiscing the past.  


If things continue as they are now, if either of them advance forward to address the other, Taki and all he holds beautiful may not even remain. Their cruel love is evocative of the flawed nature of beauty.  


It is because of this that Klaus feels as if they have done the wrong thing right.  


They have, even if it is very much a game of tug-of-war, with the exception that Taki has let loose his grip on whatever thin thread remained in his hands, allowing others to take and take until he is left with only the cold that accompanies emptiness. He orders Klaus _come back alive_ , but Klaus does not know what he has returned to, as Taki is changed, having abandoned himself and his choice for freedom.  


But then, the argument can be made that Klaus is changed as well. And whatever mistakes they have made, he is willing to mend them, despite the short time they have left. If the ends do justify the means, he is willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means he will be broken beyond repair as well. In any case, what has been broken too many times can stand another violation with little change.  


Now, Taki stands before him, his back to Klaus and his face angled upwards, as if he were challenging the sun itself into submission. The sun slowly shrinks behind the distant mountains into hiding, and the receding light hits Taki’s figure just right so that from where Klaus is standing, it gilds the outline of his face in brilliant light. Taki steps forward to greet his men, all standing at attention in their standard military uniform, with faces hard and determined. Their solemn countenances appear to please Taki as he gestures towards a lieutenant and issues orders. A subtle shift of posture, a small turn of the head, and his shadow shifts. It crawls over Klaus lazily, almost intimately, but Taki himself would never touch him in the same manner. With another step forward, his shadow leaves Klaus as well, and so Klaus slips quietly up behind Taki’s person in hopes of catching it, wondering exactly how they will be able to resolve this impasse.  


He prefers cloudy weather to this clear sky, he thinks, the foreboding kind that speaks ominously of rain. It is probably because he fancies that when the sun shines from behind those thin layers of clouds, the light produced is ever more blinding than if the sun had shone alone with no companion.  


However, as all men know, no matter the weather, the sun must set before it rises once more.


End file.
